Ada rifled the rucksack, keeping with her the canteen of water and the jacket, but stowing the gun and holster under her seat. She kept her notebook, the flashlight, and the can of peaches, and slung the pack over her shoulder. Bolts of lightning lit up the roiling columns of smoke four miles to the south. It was 5:45 P.M. The upper lake was two miles above her, and she had maybe two hours of daylight. She would have to keep a good pace.

       But the trail faded quickly to a game track overgrown with brush and crisscrossed with deadfall. Within a mile she found she was without a trail at all and having to stay nearly in the creek bed to find her way. The smoke, too, was increasing and it grated at her throat and made the going more difficult. But she had just another mile to go. It was 6:30 P.M.

       By 6:45 the climb had steepened, and smoke was blowing in heavily, causing her to cough and stumble in the murky light. It was no use pretending otherwise, the wind had come around, and was blowing to the northwest—toward her now. The hazy air was suffocating, and she wiped sweat and grit with her bandana. She wanted badly to know what was happening to the south of her, but the brush was too thick. There was no doubt, though, that nothing good would be coming behind the smoke. She wet the bandana in the stream, tied it over her nose and mouth, and continued on. The lower lake couldn’t be more than a quarter mile upstream, and there she could take refuge.

       But she nearly cried when she broke out of the brush into the clearing of the lower lake. There was no water! She found just a broad marshy flat where the shallow lake should have been. The hot summer had dried up the lake, and she would find no protection there at all. Standing in the clearing dumbstruck, her eyes and lungs burning, she was now finally able to see the fire storm to the south—and for the first time the red flames at the base of the smoke. It was no more than two miles away, and it was coming right at her. The setting sun was no more than a faint red disc at her back. Her watch said seven o’clock.

       She sprinted around the muddy marsh, burning and abrading her throat with the effort, then spent a precious ten minutes finding the right inlet stream, the one that would take her to the upper lake. With no other trail to follow, she again had to push her way up the over-grown channel. The ravine ran due east; the fire was approaching at an angle from the southeast, and she could hear it now even above her own wheezing and coughing. It was a freight train; still a mile away but eating the distance between them. If Asakura was up there, he was in better shape than she. If he was not, she couldn’t help him, but she still needed to get to the lake. There was no hope anymore of going back.

       The last pitch was steep, and she climbed hand over hand in places through the narrow ravine, getting soaked in the stream and torn by brush. But she topped the ledge and stood on the rocky basin floor just as the trees on the ridgetop crowned in flame. Searing blasts hit her, bending her over as she ran. Through swirls of clear air she could see the water just fifty yards ahead, and she made a dash. But she was coughing so hard she fell to her knees and threw up. The ground around her glowed an eerie reddish gold, and it felt as though her wet clothes were boiling on her. She rose one more time and sprinted for the water, threw off her pack, and dove in.

       She coughed underwater and nearly drowned. But she found her feet and stood, struggled for breath, then waded in chest deep. Breathing there was no easier, with clouds of smoke snaking across the surface of the lake.

       The lake water was cold and made her shiver, but the air was impossibly hot, so she dunked herself time and again. Each time she came up the air was too hot to breathe and there was too little oxygen to it. Her breaths wheezed through her throat and it felt like her chest was bleeding. A wet bandana held over her face helped to cool the air some but did nothing to find more oxygen. Her head floated and the lake surface spun, and it occurred to her dreamily that the carbon monoxide was building in her blood just as it had in the Neagles’. A bright flare seared her face and she dunked again. As she came up for air a fire-tornado snapped a flaming tree from its roots and whirled it high into the air then dropped it into the water a hundred feet away. It was the last thing she saw.